Reflections

GENERAL...

It's been quite a trip. We've covered thousands of miles across seven countries who between them use three alphabets, four currencies and six languages. All in seventeen days!

A journey like this is very intense; with a short time in each location you're under pressure to do and see everything. You have to forgive yourself for not doing even the essentials, or you'd run yourself ragged.

Up-to-date information about the place and its attractions is helpful. Our guidebooks were anything from four to fourteen years old, and once or twice we fell foul of changes to opening times and the like. We probably missed out on cool stuff too.

One area where we felt ill-prepared was with the public transport arrangements. Each country has a different system and each has its own way of selling tickets. Bus and metro maps were of variable quality and some seemed to assume some knowledge of the area; these are local systems for local people! Because we were always centrally based, we were mostly able to walk where we wanted to go, but it was something of a constraint. Taxis are pretty much the same all over, and we used them just twice. 

Speaking of transport, the inter-city services we used were very good, but it is prudent (sometimes essential) to reserve a seat. Unless you have a more developed sense of adventure, you should also book your hotels in advance!

...PARTICULAR

We like Athens, though having been there several times we feel we've "done" most of it. The city boasts a fantastic collection of ancient sites which are must-sees, though some are in a poor state.

The traffic is a nightmare, the pavements are an obstacle course and it's not as cheap as it used to be. It looks like the feral cats and dogs are making a comeback, as well. But the people are friendly and most speak English which makes the experience bearable. After a few days the alphabet starts to make sense and you don't feel so disorientated. October seems to be a good time to visit; warm but not too hot.

We didn't get to experience Thessaloniki as fully as we might have done. It's a busy, crowded city with traffic problems which are probably even worse than Athens'. The nightlife might be fun and there are plenty of archaeological sites if that floats your boat. But I doubt if we'll be returning.

We stayed at the Hotel Verginie, which is comfortable and reasonably well-positioned, though if ever we do return we might look for something a little closer to the centre. The wi-fi was not very reliable. Rather than raise the issue with the management, we did without.

We enjoyed Sofia and could have spent more time there. A long weekend would allow us to fit in some visits to the churches, galleries and museums which we only saw from the outside. Sofia is cheap, too. Beer and food are surprisingly reasonable. Foreign products such as clothes and grocery brands are no cheaper than at home, but the local equivalents seem perfectly adequate and much more reasonably priced. This will probably change when/if they join the Euro!

Many Bulgarians speak some English and a lot of the signs are bilingual, but the alphabet takes some getting used to. As with Greece, the pavements are in a shocking state. wheelchair users and those with pushchairs need not apply!

We stayed at the Hotel Maxim which is comfortable and sited about halfway between the stations and the downtown area. It has no lift; rooms are on the 1st and 2nd floor, no bother if you're fit and travelling light. The wi-fi worked well.  The immediate area around the hotel is a bit rough and ready - think Hackney - but we never felt threatened.

Something else that Bulgaria has in common with Greece is the lack of a smoking ban. Katerina (our landlady in Athens) tells us that a ban was in place in Greece, but it is largely ignored. If there ever was a ban in Bulgaria, nobody seems to know about it - these people love their fags. It serves to remind us what life was like in British pubs before they gave up smoking. How did we put up with it? 

The same goes for Romania, although some restaurants have non-smoking areas. Bucharest was a very interesting place and it deserves more attention than we could give it on this tour. It's a city in transition, worth visiting in its current rough-and-ready state.

Budapest is a more modern city with better pavements etc. than the cities we had visited up to that point. We found the geography and transport system a little confusing! We stayed in the Park Royal hotel, very close to the main station, perhaps a little too far from the essential tourist sights.

Vienna is a great place to visit. There is a large industry based on selling Mozart and Strauss-related tat, but there are also plenty of things to see and do. We intend to return, and do justice to all the museums we missed on this visit, and to sample a few more of the city's specialities. We stayed at the Pension Funfhaus, which is a basic hotel but perfectly adequate and in a good location.

Munich is more like London or Paris than the other cities on our trip. Again there are plenty of things to see and do in the city, and it's a base to visit the rest of Bavaria. We would love to see some of King Ludwig's castles - day trips are available and well priced. But we didn't have the time, this time. We stayed at the 1st Creative Hotel Elephant which was the most expensive we had stayed at, but very convenient for the station and the centre of town.

Overall, people have been very friendly and helpful, and wherever we've been it's usually been possible to find someone who speaks at least a little English. We feel guilty that we have failed to master any of the languages on our tour, even at basic tourist level. In our defence, we have spent as little as 30 hours in some countries. Next time, though, we will do our best to order our beers in the local lingo.

Here are some links which might be useful

The Fishermans' Bastion in Budapest
http://www.fishermansbastion.com/

All hotels were booked through
http://www.booking.com/

Free Sofia walking tour
http://www.freesofiatour.com/

The fount of all knowledge about international railways
http://www.seat61.com/

Where to buy the rail pass
http://www.raileurope.co.uk/Default.aspx?tabid=39

 

Four places, three countries, 48 hours

We are travelling from Vienna to Munich on Dec's birthday. Hoorah! The Journey is fast and smooth. No sign of any border crossing guards and the hour or so delay we have experienced elsewhere. Munich station is buzzing with travellers, shops and cafes. We quickly check in to our hotel which is five minutes from the station but on a quiet street.

Time to head for the old centre of town. We take our, by now, customary wrong turn and end up backtracking on ourselves but we are soon in the pedestrianised centre and on the look out for one of the city's famous beer kellers. We find ourselves sitting on a wooden bench examining a menu in German with the aid of a dictionary. It becomes clear after a few minutes that we really do need to see an English menu. Some of the dishes on offer appear to contain parts of animals such as lungs, not our cup of tea. The English version of the menu is much shorter with some of the more doubtful dishes being notable by their absence. So we choose sausage and mash with sauerkraut which Philippa decides is much nicer than she remembered, and currywurst with chips. Lovely!

Several of these is PLENTY.

As Dec is now an old man, after a few celebratory drinks, it's another early night.

Our aim on Wednesday was to get some fresh air and avoid the scrum of the shopping district. We headed for the Englischer Garden which is close to the city centre but covers an area larger than New York's Central Park. The weather improved as we walked around and the autumn colours were delightful in the weak sunshine. According to Wikipedia, there is a nudist area in the park but we didn't see it. What did come as a surprise though was the surfing, something not mentioned in Wikipedia.

Surfing in Munich?? Yes indeed. The Gardens contain a fast flowing, man made river called the Eisbach. Just below one of the bridges, the river has been formed into a wave which is now officially recognised as a surfing area for experienced surfers only. They queue up at the side of the river then take it in turns to jump in. Quite a surreal experience but very photogenic.

Sadly we were too early.

The Gardens, which were designed by an American born physicist, Sir Benjamin Thompson, also contain a Japanese tea house and a Chinese pagoda surrounded by a beer garden which can accommodate 7000 people.

We got to the halfway point where the Gardens are currently split by a busy ring road and decided that the northern half would have to wait for another day. It was time for some culture.

Close to the Garden is a group of museums known as the Pinakothek - in essence, one huge museum/gallery split over four buildings. We were heading for these when we spied another gallery in the same area, the Brandhorst. They were advertising a major Andy Warhol exhibition so we changed course to take it in.

The Brandhorst is home to a massive private collection of mostly 20th century American painters. One room contains an impressive sequence of paintings by Cy Twombly, depicting (in a very abstract way) the battle of Lepanto. They have a lot of Twombly's work; the rest of his stuff is less thrilling. Most pictures are "Untitled" and are of a style which gave rise to the phrase "my 4-year-old daughter could do that".

The Warhol stuff was interesting, though. Before his rise to fame as, well, a famous person, he designed and illustrated books, some of his own and some for other authors. To be honest they are not brilliant, though they are typical of their time. The exhibition also included a video comprising about forty 3-minute screen tests, silent black-and-white movies of the various habitues of Warhol's Factory, including Lou Reed and Dennis Hopper, both recently deceased. Three minutes is a long time to be staring at the camera, I'm sure it tells you something about the people in question. But what? As with most video installations, we gave it about five minutes and moved on.

To round off the day, we found another traditional Bavarian/Turkish restaurant for dinner and beers. After our grand tour of the Englischer Garten we were in no shape to stay out late!

 Our last morning in Munich was spent idly, with a big breakfast followed by a wander through the main shopping centre. This leads to Marienplatz where the church has a famous glockenspiel which chimes on the hour while some automatons enact a historic scene. We arrived just before noon and waited for the big moment, which took place about five minutes after every other clock in town had finished chiming. To our unsophisticated ears, the glockenspiel was either out of time or out of tune, or both. The animation was less impressive than we had been led to expect, so overall it was not quite the highlight of our visit.

We headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags then on to the station to catch the train to Paris via Mannheim.

Munich to Mannheim was uneventful; a comfortable trip, if a little crowded - 1st November is a holiday in religious parts of Europe including South Germany and France, so there were a lot of travellers.

Changing at Mannheim was interesting. The station was very busy, signs were inconspicuous and when we found the right platform, there was something of a scrum to board the Paris train. Thankfully we had reservations!

We arrive in Paris about 9pm, and we have a reservation for dinner at 10 with our good friend Frances who has an apartment in the 11th Arrondissement. It's a Kurdish restaurant and the food is not bad. Nor is the wine! It must be said we have become used to lower prices - Paris is way more expensive than, say, Bucharest.

After a restful night we packed our bags for the final time and headed for Gare du Nord and London. This is part of the journey we have done many times and we use the time to read and rest.

Arriving at St Pancras on a Friday evening, and crossing town to Victoria Coach station, serves to remind us how wise we were to move out of town and settle in Devizes! How we ever managed to live - and enjoy living - in such an absurdly busy and crowded environment is a mystery.

The coach to Devizes is also an old favourite. And the best part is arriving in New Park Street! It's 9pm, and with no food in the house we decide to round off our holiday with a traditional British dish from our favourite takeaway - Sweet and Sour Chicken with Egg Fried Rice. 

It's good to be back!

And so to Budapest

Oops! This entry should have been published before our Vianna posts. Don't get confused!

Budapest is a strange city. Originally two separate cities called Buda and Pest divided by the river Danube, they were combined as late as 1873 but each retains their individual character. Pest is relatively flat and contains our hotel. Across the river, Buda is hillier and arguably more historic.

Who's that good-looking guy in the foreground?

We only have about 30 hours to spend in the city. We start with a quick brunch, sitting outside a proper Hungarian cafe. We have a traditional dish called Langos, a deep-fried flatbread served with toppings such as goulash or cheese and bacon - just what the doctor ordered!

Our cafe was at one end of a self-guided walk in the guidebook covering the Jewish quarter. The area has several synagogues, some no longer in use, along with shops and houses. What are called "ruin bars" - we would call them "pop-ups" - have been temporarily established in the run-down buildings, bringing life back into the area. Our map lists several, and we felt obliged to check them out.

Our impression was that many of the bars on the list are actually pretty well-established, with professional signage and proper bar furniture so they don't really qualify as pop-ups. We found a good one which has been built into a courtyard and has the ramshackle air of something thrown together over a weekend but is actually a proper bar. Nice beer, too!

Later in the afternoon we set out to tour Buda. We crossed the Danube on the Chain Bridge, and took the funicular railway to the main tourist area. Housed here are the National Gallery as well as various other historic buildings.

We didn't visit the gallery - it had been a long day - but our guide book told as that it's home to Hungarian art from the earliest to the present day. It would probably have taken several hours to do it justice and we didn't have the time.

Pest by night from the Fisherman's Bastion

Instead, we toured the area around the gallery, which has been home to royal palaces and fortresses and is now blessed with a selection of stalls selling T-shirts and a superb collection of lovely fridge magnets. We followed the walking tour of the area which ended up at our next port of call, a restaurant at the Fishermans Bastion, built into the surviving fortifications and offering amazing views over the Danube and Pest.

The centrepiece of the restaurant

The restaurant is everything we expected it to be - beautifully designed and very comfortable. The menu features international cuisine with a Hungarian twist, and excellent local wines recommended by the sommelier. While we ate, musicians played light classical pieces arranged for violin, bass and cimbalom - a string instrument played with hammers, which you might have heard in Janacek's Harry Janos suite or the theme tune to The Persuaders. It takes skill to play it well and our man was an expert, playing Chopin and Mozart pieces as if it were a piano. We bought the CD and look forward to getting home to play it!

We didn't get the hang of public transport in Budapest at all, not helped by the complete lack of signs and none of the metro staff speaking English - perhaps it's unreasonable to expect this but we have been spoilt so far in this respect. We ended up taking a taxi back to the hotel, money well spent. After a restful night we checked out and made our way to the railway station - about five minutes walk - for our next port of call. Vienna!

Another day in Vienna

Our second day in Vienna starts well. A light breakfast in the hotel, a stroll down to the railway station and the underground to Stephensplatz. Today's plan involves visitng the Albertina, which our guidebook tells us is home to works by several of our favourite artists. In addition there's a special exhibition featuring Matisse, another of our faves.
 
We make our way to the gallery and join the queue for tickets. When we reach the head of the queue, we see three things. First, the price - 11 Euros, about £10. Second, a card saying that much of the main collection is out on loan. Third, the Matisse exhibition is closed for the 28th and 29th October - our only two days in Vienna! Given that they still want to charge 11 euros to see what's left, we decide to give it a miss. At the risk of sounding like smug globetrotters, we had the same problem with items out on loan at the Guggenheim in New York and the Musee D'Orsay in Paris. It might make financial sense for galleries to loan their pieces to other galleries but there should surely be some compensation to their customers.

Our plan B is to visit another gallery across town, the MUMOK which also contains some great modern masterpieces, according to our guidebook. After a short ride on the metro and a longish walk, we arrive at MUMOK around 11:30 to find that while the gallery opens every day at 10AM, on Mondays it doesn't open till 2PM! Time for Plan C.

Our fallback position involves a visit the Kunsthaus Wien, a gallery designed by and housing the work of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, a 20th-century artist and architect whose name was vaguely familiar to us, although we couldn't quite work out why.

He's very good at toilets

Hundertwasser is a little like Gaudi, the Barcelona architect whose buildings are curved and patterned with mosaics and stained glass. Hundertwasser's gallery is all of this - uneven floors, wonky windows, beautiful tiled patterns on every surface. We soon discover why his name sounded familiar; on our trip to New Zealand in 2006 we visited Kakoura, where they have a public lavatory which he designed. It was very similar to the loos here. He has also beautified an incinerator in Vienna and customised a church in Magdburg among many other projects.

His art is distinctive, almost childlike in its simplicity but skilful and evocative. He's our new favourite artist, not least because his gallery was open on a Monday!

After getting our cultural fix we headed for the world-famous Ferris Wheel, as seen in The Third Man. It's a venerable institution, about 100 years old. We shared our "pod" with a British family who live in Munich - our next destination - and chatted about what to see and do there, while enjoying the sunset over Vienna. 

Vienna waits...

It's a short hop, relatively speaking, from Budapest to Vienna. About four hours on a modern train with all mod cons including wifi. With a distrust of on-train catering born on the rails of Southern Region and GWR, we had picked up another Langosh at a local cafe with the last of our Forints, and passed the time on board playing Cribbage. The time just flew by -  especially for Philippa, who was on a winning streak - and before we knew it, it was time to leave the train and stride into Vienna.

Vienna's Westbanhof (main station) is very modern, all shiny glass and metal with classy shops on several levels. However the surrounding area is a lot like the area round most main line stations, scruffy and full of low-budget cafes and bars. And our hotel is just up the road! It's not a problem; the area is very safe, and the hotel is fine. We check in, freshen up and head out for our first look at this amazing city.

Vienna's public transport system includes a underground, trams and buses which you can use with a 48-hour pass (12 euro! bargain). We took the underground  to Stephensplatz, the de facto centre of the tourist area. The square is dominated by the cathedral of St Stephen and by mobs of guys in Mozart-period costumes whose job seems to be to sell tickets to Mozart concerts. We avoid them, as we already have tickets for a show, of which more later.

We've done very little research on Vienna. We haven't even watched The Third Man! Our plan is to wander around the central area, consulting our (seven-year-old) guide book, and heading for tonight's venue in time for the show. The first item on the agenda is to pop into Loos' American bar. This is a tiny bar designed by Adolf Loos in the twenties and popular for some reason with expats. Its low lighting and dark walls give it atmosphere, the drinks are quite reasonable too.

The cake, midway through demolition.

We follow our noses and find various interesting places such as the Albertina, a gallery we intend to visit. However it's Sunday afternoon and almost everywhere is closed. We stop at the Museum Cafe for a meal. Philippa yields to the impulse and orders a delicious-looking chocolate cake, a Mozart Torte. Hey, we're on holiday!

Before long it's time to head for our concert which is taking place in the Musikverein, a venue world-famous for the annual New Years Day concert. We enter the building and find ourselves in the famous auditrioum  - it's amazing, a lot smaller than you'd expect if you've seen it on TV and a riot of gold leaf and red plush. Philippa has managed to obtain tickets in the middle of the sixth row which is just about the best place to be. Well done P!

Musikverein. Cosy and Kitsch!

Tonight's concert consists of a symophony and two arias by Mozart, and Mahler's 4th symphony - both composers have a connection to the city. It's a great performance, an amazing experience and we leave the hall feeling very positive towards Vienna and its famous sons. We pop on the underground and are back at the hotel in 10 minutes. Time for an early night.

Night train to Budapest

There's a romance to train travel. The bustling station, the exotic destinations on the departures board, the endless bloody burger chains...

Bucharest's main station is modelled on the Gare du Nord in Paris but it has the same atmosphere as Waterloo or Paddington - they even have a McDonalds, a KFC and a Subway. But they also have some local fast food joints. Yes they sell junk food, but it's ROMANIAN junk, hurrah! As reported in the our previous post, we have taken the precaution of stocking up on food and drink en route to the station.

The station is really busy when we arrive at about 4:30. Ninety-five percent of the passengers are on their way to the suburbs after a day's work in the city.  We're in the other five per cent, on our way across Europe by the Night Train To Budapest!

It being a night train, there are sleeping cars. Strangely, they are divided according to gender so we have decided to book seats. We did this on the Ghan (going north from Adelaide to Darwin via Alice Springs) and it worked out ok. That was two and a half days; this is just fifteen hours.

The train is nearly full, and we're lucky to get a double seat to ourselves with a table between. This means we can pass at least some of the time playing Cribbage, the best card game in the world. Philippa usually has a pack of cards and a crib board in her bag, and today is no exception. Dec asks that we draw a veil over the result.

There's no scenery to describe because it's dark out there. Time passes slowly; a small child nearby plays with a gameboy which plays its stupid plinky plonk music, interrupted and restarted at random, for an hour, although it felt longer than that. But otherwise the carriage is fairly quiet. We doze and read, doze and read until we reach the border about 6AM. Our passports and tickets are inspected THREE TIMES. Then it's back to dozing and reading. The train is due to arrive at 8:20, so it won't be long.

HOWEVER. An unscheduled stop at Beckescsaba station lasts for over an hour without a word of explanation. It's just like being at home, this. The train finally gets going at 9:30. Sadly that's 9:30 ROMANIAN time, which is an hour ahead of HUNGARIAN time. We still have a long way to go.

We finally arrive at Budapest about 11:15, which is a disaster for two of our fellow passengers. They're members of the Romanian National Ski team who are on their way to a training camp in Austria, carrying several pairs of skis and who knows what else in some of the biggest bags we've ever seen. They seem bound to miss their connection, and they will be changing trains again in Vienna. Best of luck guys!

Our hotel is a short walk from the station, and we check in and shower before heading out to explore the town. The hotel provides a map which we use to head for the centre. However none of the street names match those on the map. It turns out that this free map doesn't cover the area around "our" station. A long walk and a bus ride later, we finally make it to an area with restaurants because we need breakfast AND lunch - it's 1pm by now.  In search of refreshment,  we close our account of the night train in time to do some tourism.

A day in Bucharest

We made it to our hotel in Bucharest the hard way, having taken a wrong turn on leaving the metro station. But we reached it in the end. After checking in, we realised that a day on the train was pretty tiring so rather than trek down town, we settled for a meal in the  hotel restaurant and an early night.

The room and meal were both excellent, and very reasonable to boot. Two mains, two desserts and a bottle of very nice Romanian wine came to about £36. We reckon the same meal would have cost over £60 in Devizes.

As we were spending only one night in Bucharest and catching the 17:40 overnight train to Budapest, we planned to make the most of our time by joining the free guided walking tour. However, despite being in apparently the right place at the right time, we couldn't find the meeting point so we had to organise our own tour, with the help of a map provided by the hotel. Once again our luck was in; the weather was dry and sunny, warm but not too hot.

Bucharest is a big town and very busy. Everyone seems to have celebrated the downfall of communism by buying a car, and they drive and park as thoughtlessly as in Athens or Thessaloniki. Despite the size of the city, there are plenty of sights to see within a mile or so of our hotel.

Wanted: window cleaner

 Top of our list was the Peoples' Palace, a folly in the grand style started by Nicolai Ceausescu in 1985 and just about complete when he died (executed by an ungrateful poroletariat) in 1989. The project involved the demolition of several thousand homes, a couple of dozen churches, several monasteries and two hospitals. In their place, old Nic created the second largest building in the world - only the Pentagon is larger.

It's ENORMOUS, people. Absolutely HUMUNGOUS. Over 100 metres high and about two miles in circumference. You can't deny that it's impressive. Since the fall of communism. the building has been used as the nation's parliament, and also contains two museums and a contemporary art gallery.

We decided to visit the gallery, even though this meant walking halfway round the building. The gallery is tucked away near the back, which turns out on closer inspection to be a lot less impressive than the front. The gardens have become a weedy wasteland, and the condition of the building itself is surprisingly poor given that it's only 25 years old.

We spent an interesting hour or so looking at the art. It's modern stuff, much of it by local artists. It includes striking images and video installations, many of which were disturbing. But maybe that's what happens in a country with a history as troublesome and varied as Romania's.

Parcu Cismigiu. Pretty!

After a walk through the beautiful Parcu Cismigiu, our next stop was for lunch as we anticipated a lack of refreshment on the train. Our choice turned out to be a good one. Romanian cuisine includes a range of dishes common with countries such as Greece, Bulgaria and Hungary, all of which have been adopted and adapted to produce tasty and hearty dishes. Just what we needed.

We returned to the hotel to collect our bags,  picking up a few snacks on the way. Tonight's journey is due to take over 15 hours and we want to survive it. This means buying plenty of water, a bottle of wine and a corkscrew, plus two jam jars - we couldn't find anywhere that sold plastic wine glasses and we're not proud. Jam jars are tough, cheap and they have lids. We also picked up fruit and snacks and Dec bought a book at the English Language bookshop - there really is such a thing. "The String Of Pearls. A Romance"   It may not sound too inspiring, but it's the original story of Sweeney Todd. No sleep till Budapest!